It’s funny how the strongest of our beliefs change as we move through life stages. When I was in college, my mom was always keen to pack a fresh home cooked meal for me and I thought it to be the most uncool idea and now miles away my lunch box is a thing of joy and celebration for me every day… well almost every day!

I have a simple way of deciding what to pack for lunch, if a Dish passes the BED test, it’s on my lunchbox list. It should be Beautiful, Easy and Delicious! With a bit of planning you open a host of possibilities, I plan about 3 weeks of menu and let them rotate till we get bored and then I refresh. I will be happy to share weekly menu samples if you feel it would be useful, please let me know!

So back to today’s recipe, its a much healthier and cheaper version of a Kimchi Fried Rice that you would find in a restaurant, where a single dish would be around 650+KCal here your entire dish would be about 300KCal and way more nutritious. You could make it the night before but I like to make it fresh, I ensure I keep 1/2 a bowl of leftover rice and a jar of kimchi at home the night before.

Get a few florets of cauliflower, half and onion thickly sliced, half a carrot – roughly diced, cabbage – large cuts, a handful of frozen or fresh peas and three tablespoons full of kimchi. With all the goodness and satisfaction that these vegetables offer I just need a tiny bowl of rice to complete this dish. You can see the proportion of rice and that is the key, if you want to go even more healthy use brown rice. For me the mantra is BALANCE – between taste and health, carbs. and vegetables

Once you have the ingredients ready it’s a 5-7min job! Heat a large wok on high heat, put in 1tbsp oil, add onions saute for 30sec add cauliflower, carrots, peas, add a pinch of salt saute for 2min. Add kimchi and cabbage, mix around saute for a min add the rice, mix well. Let it heat through should not take more than 2-3min. Voila! you have your uber healthy lunch ready.

I’d love to know your thoughts if you get a chance to try this dish. I will try to get the format of the posts such that a printable version of the recipes is available, for the more complex recipes.